Blueridge BG-2500 Super Jumbo Acoustic Guitar Review

Most acoustic guitar spotters learn to
love the subtle things. While a 5-year-old
kid can tell a Flying V from a 335, the
differences between a GA and an OM tend
to be lost on the average concertgoer. The
exception to that rule might be the mighty
and imposing profile of jumbo-sized guitars.
Originally designed by Gibson to be
loud and bold-looking on stage, the jumbo
became synonymous with cowboy stars, and
in later years, rockers like Pete Townshend
and Jeff Tweedy would treasure their warm,
outsized voice and potential for projection.

Gibson wasn’t the only company to
explore the potential of jumbo bodies. Guild’s
jumbo-sized 12-strings are the stuff of legend
for their bigger-than-life acoustic sounds,
and Lyon & Healy’s pre-war jumbos are
among some of the mightiest acoustic guitars
ever built. But Gibson’s J-200 remains, in
many ways, the standard bearer, and though
Blueridge’s BG-2500 Super Jumbo, reviewed
here, isn’t a strict reinterpretation of Gibson’s
grande dame, it riffs on the concept in a positively
celebratory way that looks fantastic and
results in some very big and rich sounds too.

Dressed to Kill
One of Blueridge’s trademarks is the
company’s knack for subtly fancifying
mid-century, American acoustic classics.
But, the BG-2500, while far from an
exercise in ostentatious design, is hardly
subtle. For starters, it’s big—17" across the
lower bout and 21" in body length—and
if you’re used to playing anything smaller
than a dreadnought, the extra size can
throw you for a loop.

All that extra size adds up to a beautiful
canvas for a lot of very nice wood. The
back and sides are deep and striking flame
maple. And though the back is not crafted
from a precisely book-matched set, the
pieces are beautifully paired and divided by
a nicely executed stripe of alternating black
and white. The top, meanwhile, is narrowgrained
spruce with a finish that doesn’t
look deliberately antiqued, but has the
toasty, honey glow of a vintage instrument
that has aged gracefully.

Blueridge’s decision to lend it’s own Art
Deco-inspired design touches to the guitar,
rather than ape trademark Gibson touches,
results in several design elements that are
quite tasteful and unique. The rosewood
bridge is the most overtly Deco touch—an
almost architectural element that combines
rosewood and pearloid inlay in a stylized
wing shape that wouldn’t look out of place
on a Pan Am China Clipper in the late
’30s. The lovely and bound tortoise-style
pickguard lends a nice sense of design balance
to the big body, though it also feels
needlessly thick and heavy enough to
potentially invite the scorn of tone purists
that are wary of superfluous mass on a top.

The neck, which is also crafted from
very striking maple, is a thick and substantial
length that feels playable, comfortable
as counterweight to the body, and mid-century
correct in its heft. It’s tastefully bound
(which has an especially cool effect at the
peak where the neck and soundhole meet)
and capped by a rosewood fretboard that’s
inlayed with more Deco-geometry pearl.

Unlike some of the fancier Blueridge
acoustics, which are festooned in fireworks
shows of peghead overlay, the BG-2500
exhibits great restraint—relying on a
dramatically curving and fluted profile,
white-on-black binding, and a subtle
Deco insignia to maintain visual balance
with the tuxedo-sharp elegance of the rest
of the guitar.

Loud as a Manhattan Rush Hour
With all its curvaceous, cool-as-the-
Chrysler-Building, Deco good looks, the
BG-2500 deserves a sonic personality
that’s just as stylish and extroverted. And
though the Blueridge doesn’t have the all
harmonic balance you’d expect from a
guitar this big in some situations, it can
be brash, tastefully bold, and colorful
depending on how you approach it.

As Pete Townshend demonstrated so
effectively with his maple J-200s, a jumbo
can be a formidable rock guitar. It’s also an
impressively bellowing, strumming instrument
for country rhythm. The BG-2500
is best in both applications, though, when
you use a dynamic, flatpick approach. If
you want to really attack the BG-2500
with a heavy flatpick and an aggressive
Townshend-like approach, there’s plenty
of headroom with which you can extract
power-chord-style muscle with a sweet,
ringing top end that sings over the rumble.
And when you hammer the guitar in lower
open tunings based around D and C#, the
BG-2500 is about as loud and full as an
acoustic guitar can be. But a light touch
can sound lovely too, especially on chord
arpeggios higher up the neck.

In general, the BG-2500 isn’t an especially
friendly fingerstyle instrument, particularly
if you play without a thumbpick.
Counting on the flesh of your thumb to
really drive the bass the way it begs to be
driven could leave you underwhelmed. If
you’re an ace with a thumbpick, however,
the BG-2500 can reward you with cool,
warm, and husky tones that lend a bossy
flavor to Carter Family picking and strumming
to John Martyn-styled jazz-folk.

If there’s any one complaint about the
BG-2500, it’s a lack of tonal complexity
that you can probably chalk up, in part, to
the guitar’s less-than-seasoned wood. This
instrument could both mellow with age
and develop some crispness in the high end.
Certainly, the wood is high-quality stuff
and it’s built solidly enough to age gracefully
too. Though with a street price around
$1,800 bucks, you might like a little more
character from the get-go.

The Verdict
There’s something simultaneously brutish
and romantic about a nice jumbo.
And the Blueridge BG-2500 captures that
duality splendidly. While a guitar this
basically loud could benefit from a slightly
wider harmonic spectrum, the BG-2500
does get very colorful when you drive it
hard with a flatpick. And as long as you
have the muscle and technique to put a
little something extra behind your thumbpick,
the BG-2500 can deliver percussive
and full-sounding accompaniment to
vocals or a band.

If you’re a smaller player, or most comfortable
with guitars that are 000-sized or
smaller, the BG-2500 is an armful and can
get downright tiring over the course of a
long set. And it really takes more horsepower
than a smaller acoustic to summon
its full range of tones. But if your style
tends toward rock and country strumming
or blues and Appalachian picking based
on a more athletic approach, the BG-2500
can lend a boisterous and warm vocal
quality to your playing in a style that’ll
leave ’em gawking.

Charles Saufley is a writer, editor, and musician from San Francisco. He has been the gear editor at Premier Guitar since 2010 and previously served as an editor at Acoustic Guitar magazine.

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